Sergio doesn't link to our blogs so that his readers can decide how well (or not) he is representing us, and his blog only allows approved comments, so...

Sergio –

I was thinking that the installation, and the experience of it, was to be the artwork… but you are saying that the individual objects which were to comprise the installation are each artworks, independent of each other, and that their individual artistic autonomy is not conditional upon realization of the proposed installation.

Andre Breton defined the ready-made as “manufactured objects promoted to the dignity of objects of art through the choice of the artist”, and Marcel Duchamp never clearly defined the term.

I’m curious about how your claim applies to objects such as the house, one of the objects that Buchel has clearly expressed his rejection of… including in his statement released to the Boston Globe - “firstly, this is not the house that Christoph selected”. Two paragraphs later Buchel says “the museum ended up saving a few hundred dollars on purchasing a cheaper option of mobile home that was not approved by the artist”.

Your rape analogy is not clear to me... if, as you state in the rape comparison, “the intent of either party is irrelevant”, than couldn’t it be argued that whatever intent those objects may have initially signified became irrelevant once Buchel abandoned the project? Wouldn’t they revert back to non-art? Again, I’m not clear on what your point was there.

“To continue to argue that Büchel was not physically present when the art objects were obtained and installed is to continue the romanticized and worn our argument of authenticity, aura, and the hand-made art object—a theory eviscerated by Duchamp and which any first-year art student from any two-year institution quickly learns. As Emma Bloomfield rightly points out, “I have never heard of a ready-made be called ‘a material.’”

Ugh, Clannco, maybe I gave you to much credit when I asked those questions on your blog.

To continue arguing? Who is arguing that, or who are you saying is arguing what? I’m not getting what you’re trying to say. My belief is that the art is whatever Buchel says it is, and if he isn’t saying the unfinished installation is art, and isn’t claiming the individual objects to be art, than none of it is art, and the museum can do whatever it wants with it. I’m so into ideas of replication, reproduction, and approximation in absentia that I’d be thrilled if the museum would take the tarps off the disavowed house, clear everything else completely out of the gallery, and open the exhibition as Christoph Buchel Approximately.

Who is Emma Bloomfield? You lost me.

“The fact that the museum executed his commands to obtain and purchase the objects based on his drawings and model solidify the fact that the objects at this point were no longer materials but evidently art objects.”

I read Buchel’s statement as evidence that the museum in fact failed to execute his commands to obtain the desired materials.

“follow Skadden Arps’ wounded lead…”

Wrong. My first post on this was May 16, after visiting the museum and after reading the Geoff Edgers article, but before the museum had announced it’s decision to cancel the Buchel show and open Made at Mass Moca. I did eventually notice the Skadden ISP showing up and checking out those Buchel posts, but had no idea who they might be working for or if they were even involved, including when I posted a June 18 shout-out to them. I am not aware of any efforts by Skadden to make contact with or influence any media.

“is what any first year law student learns during the first week of law school”+“also known to any first year law student under contract law” +“which any first-year art student from any two-year institution quickly learns”=Super Annoying. Assuming the voice of authority is NOT working.

What is most funny about this post is that when I saw it this (Thursday) afternoon around 3pm, there was nothing new on Zaretsky's blog about Buchel. A mysterious and concerned someone immediately left Winkleman a comment asking "via donn zaretsky means zaretsky contacted you about this? i didn't see anything new on the blog"... and then, VOILA!, less than half an hour later Zaretsky updates his blog with the information. Ed never replied.

So, why is Donn Zaretsky apparently contacting sympathetic cut-and-pasters? I mean, if the Buchel position is so strong? Why try so hard to court and shape public opinion? It seems pretty obvious, with that quick posting, that he is paying close attention to the comments.

AFC has a short list of links to some of the more recent Buchel stuff, the most generally informative of which is probably this ArtInfo feature by William Hanley, which also talks about the different approaches the opposing lawyers are taking in the public relations battle. The problem with this article is that it makes no mention of Buchel's history of pranks and chain-yanking... which seems so relevant, right?

The CLANCCO site is pretty good also, lots of the legal stuff, and he's arguing for the artist... but I'm not buying/getting the premise of his argument, that they are arguing over an artwork. It's misleading, and the reaction of anyone sympathetic to artists (including myself) would be to get worked up that the museum is out of line.

But is Buchel calling this an artwork? Is the museum calling this an artwork? My understanding is that neither party is claiming this to be an artwork. Buchel's statements have claimed that the museum purchased many of the wrong items, not the items he requested or would have chosen... Buchel has also stated that the abandoned installation is less than half completed.

If it isn't the stuff he would have chosen, gathered in different piles than he would have liked, less than half finished, and the museum isn't claiming it to be a work by Buchel... how does the VARA stuff apply?

Could the museum throw all of that stuff in a field for a year, bring it back next summer, and have a mock Christoph Buchel exhibition? Could someone buy, or probably offer to haul away for free, all of the abandoned Buchel junk from Mass Moca, bring it down to Harlem and have a "Christoph Buchel Approximately" show at Triple Candie?

How does VARA apply to stuff like Henry Darger, who - in a hospital and knowing he would never be able to return to his apartment - instructed his landlord to destroy any drawings or journals he might find? How come a museum can have a Darger exhibit?

Thursday, July 26, 2007

Linh Dinh, an artist and poet friend from way back when, in Philadelphia, is on youtube - I discovered him amongst James Kalm's subscribers - making videos with his (mostly published) poetry.

This one is called Losers, it's almost four minutes long... worth your time FOR SURE. Spend four minutes and watch some video poetry. It's kind of funny. You need to turn the sound on to hear Linh's recital. If you can't handle four minutes and need something shorter look at No Biggies (1:24), or Pick-Up Lines (1:25).

NOTE: i've edited this post since first posting it last night with an embedded video... just didn't like the way it looked, and i wanted to be able to add links (but couldn't figure out how to do that without losing the video).

Tuesday, July 24, 2007

Larry Bamburg, inStubborn Materials, at Peter Blum- his sculpture is made of silvery detritus attached to fishing line, spinning from a ceiling fan... really beautiful in the sunlight. I don't think there was any sound, but I'm remembering it like soft wind chimes.

This show also had soft yellow foam sculpture... I think I saw three soft yellow foam sculptures in three different shows this visit, including the John Chamberlain at Zwirner. Plus, this is the gallery that recently had a yellow foam piece by John Beech. Some yellow foam pieces are better than others, for sure.... I liked the John Beech, but not the one in this show (can't remember who did it).

Philip Akkerman, at Goff + Rosenthal- he's in a three person show with Francis Alys and Stephen Bush. Akkerman is really good (again), Alys is interesting, and Bush is a snooze/yuk.

There is disappointingly little, in English, about Pierre Manzoni on the internet. It's funny to see what artists are on Wikipedia, and who is missing. Kind of a joke. Some galleries are really on top of all that, maybe? I think any artist that is bought by Saatchi, his people put on Wikipedia... but it's amazing who isn't listed... no Joe Overstreet, for example, no Rosalyn Drexler.

Not saying there is anything at all wrong about Saatchi, or whomever, putting his artists on Wikipedia... just that being included, or not, on Wikipedia doesn't seem to be much of a measure of artistic relevance or significance.

Elliott Green, in By Invitation Only, at Kinz, Tillou + Feigen - Saw this show, enjoyed seeing the Elliott Green, and then happened to see the same painting on the cover of a literary magazine a few days later; he has a small spread of more work in the center. I think the magazine was called Fence.

He sometimes works with Amy Sillman and David Humphrey, as a collaborative called Team Shag; I also relate his stuff to Ellen Birkenblitt's.

Friday, July 20, 2007

The piece above is paper, the black is spray-paint, and I wasn't thinking of it as representing anything, but it's actually a stencil of a city-scape. Knowing that, I still read it first as form. I'm reading the positive space (which i guess is actually the negative space)... just liking the colors and hanging. If anything... I see it as a hanging robe, or maybe a bat form.

Interesting because it is a painting, a sculptural element, as well as the thing left-over from the making of another painting, possibly part of a performance... without the performance-relicness taking away from the individual objectness, the way that sometimes can.

He's got some other pieces - large, free-hanging, purply digital prints - that read as abstract (and could be paintings), but which also reference buildings and skylines... although not so much that once you realize it you lose the abstract reading.

Two small floor pieces are separate individual works, but placed under the wall hangings.

Twelve small coins on a small sheet of square paper, which you can see in the first picture posted, and six belts on a German newspaper. Maybe the coins and belts and newspaper are more city references? Something male? This show looks almost too good... too handsome, too well-designed.

This Alfred Jensen is one of four included in A Point in Space Is a Place for an Argument , at Zwirner, along with the Overstreet posted below. It's signed and dated on the front, Alfred Jensen July 20 1957... fifty years ago today. If I was in NYC today I would go to Zwirner and stare hard at the center of that painting... try to jump through space and time... until I self-integrate.

"So we'll live and pray and sing and tell old tales and laugh of gilded butterflies" - W.S.

"No repeated group of words would fit their rythm and no scale could give them meaning" - Nathaniel West"

Tuesday, July 17, 2007

This group show at Lennon Weinberg was good to walk into... so much color. I had just been to maybe three or four restrained, bare-bones, Japanese-y group shows in a row with exactly the same tatami/straw/white/stone subdued palette... what was up with all of that? There was some good work, but it was like an editor from Elle Decor curated all of them.

Roger White has two paintings in this small show. The one on the right is called Baja, and the other one is called something like "sheet", or maybe "towel"... can't remember... but, it is evidently a painting of a sheet or a towel. Neither of these I guess are really abstraction... but the sheet one is not so obviously a picture of something, like the baja. Both are painted well, thin and loose. The "sheet" is full of a triangle pattern... and within each triangle the brushwork is unfussy and spontaneous. Very much liked that one.

Sarah and I had not seen each other in almost four years... and then I ran into her on the street, the same day she gets that review, in the middle of having a conversation about her, and previous freaky Sarah coincidences. Sarah is maybe magic?

Thomas Gainsborough, Viscount Hampden, 1780 - This portrait is not in the Manton exhibition, it was already at the Clark, on display upstairs along with one other (an earlier one). This painting, if you ever get to the Clark, needs to be seen.

I miss it in the lobby, which now has an expanded bookstore, with a pretty good (and welcome) selection, but looks horrible. Like a Barnes & Noble remainder table, plus coffee shop, times twenty. What happened? Is this temporary? That lobby looks like crap, it used to be so nice.

Okay. I am lying. That is not Simon Watson. That is Ed Slipek. I have never met this Simon Watson person....

James Kalm WENT! Look at his video! Unfortunately, he came and left before I had arrived, so I didn't get to say thanks. James Kalm says on that video that I am one of his first subscribers, but that is wrong. I'm not one of the first, I was the FIRST.

The 3-D glasses include half a face, so everyone is walking around with the same half-face, reaching out to touch 3-D things. This was fun, with people. Barry has a great picture.

So, is AVAF one person, Eli Sudbrack, or is it sometimes a collaborative? Maybe it is always Eli, but collaborating with different artists along the way, for different installations? I thought the 2004 Whitney Biennial room, with the spiral staircase, was a super-snooze... but this John Connelly installation was electra-engaging. Downstairs was more, a long corridor, music and neon... I can't describe... but it was hypnotic, threatening, intense, really good.

there is a room you can stick your head in and see a bunch of party trash.

PLUS:Pat Berran and Kate Horne, artists who have shown at Nonesuch, are included in the show in the front space (at RARE), and Pat Berran, henceforth referred to as Patrick, is featured on PaintersNYC today.

This sculpture (pictured above) is in the back room... the same Hopper painting, but with the street-scene painted out, and things moving around, back and forth. Tiny video cameras are mounted on some of the moving parts. The light and movement filmed by the tiny cameras mounted on the sculpture is blue-screened into the background of the Hopper painting... that is what is shown on the video monitor in the front room, filmed by a camera mounted across from the sculpture, focused directly on the painting (not showing any of the sculpture).

If someone walks between the sculpture and the video camera across from it, that person blocks out the painting for a moment...

The Albert Oehlen in this show is for sale at $425,000, but for that much money you could buy TWO cars in that unbelievable Chelsea car showroom.Green Lotus. Does Albert Oehlen get half, or is that like a re-sale? Do his paintings generally sell for that much? If I were an artist like that I would have a lot of nice cars.

There is a small Al Souza which I initially mistook for a possible Arturo Herrera, then circled through the show and came upon a Herrera. The Souza is the better Herrera.

i forget, in Rare Birds, at Luise Ross, through July 27th - the premise is maybe a little corny - everything has birds in it! - but the work is good. Way too many charming pieces to name all their names.... but it was especially nice to see a second John Evans that day (the first was in the Pavel Zoubak collage show).

The snake in the piece above is a twisted piece of tinfoil; the red sun and star I think are sawdust, or sand.

Jakub Julian Ziolkowski, in Three for Society, at 303 Gallery, through July 27th - something creepy, like a leather mask or something...both his paintings are cartoony but creepy like that. I like the way he lets these tiny controlled drips happen, and then works them into the composition... for example, in the piece above you can maybe see that little drip of blue in the shoulder, and in this piece you can see the oily ass-crack sweat.

There is so much tension in that drip of blue in the shoulder.

I also liked the Mary Heilmann.Josh Smith, in Irreversible, at Stellan Holm - good abstract painting show... they wouldn't let me take pictures, this Josh Smith one was snapped as the guy said "No Pictures", so it sucks, sorry.

This Josh Smith so clearly has the name spelled out, so I asked if it was made before or after the work included in his recent solo at Lehmann Maupinn, in which none of the (possible) text is legible. They said this piece was made after those pieces...

Unfortunately, I did not get a chance to focus on this show as much as I'd have liked, because I ran into someone and got distracted. There was a nice stripe/stain glittery piece by John Armleder.

Tuesday, July 03, 2007

What is it called when you make stains, or drips, or find a splotch... and then make a picture from that? Is there a word? I know that there are/were specific surrealist techniques - like frottage, fumage, soufflage - that an artist can use as a basis for further refinement... but is there just a more general word?

Anyways, whatever the word is, that is what she seems to be doing here. Lots of play with paint, followed by more careful, but still playful, delineation... finding faces and animals and fantastical landscapes.

They are cute, and have the little girl thing going on... some of them could be illustrating fairy-tales... but the painting inventiveness, the embrace of chance and possible sloppy endings, keeps the saccharine from completely taking over.

Monday, July 02, 2007

Tom Meacham, at Oliver Kamm, through July 13th - these paintings are not really paintings....... the one on the left is some kind of print, maybe an inkjet print, directly onto canvas, and the one one the right is black tape on canvas. There is a table of knives, like a street stand, I'm not sure what that is about. Oliver Kamm is consistently interesting.

Oh, surprise, I just did a search of this blog to find any previous Oliver Kamm mentions here, and it turns out I talked about Tom Meacham's O. Kamm show back in 11/2005. Weird. Looking at those pictures of the 2005 show, on the gallery's website, makes me think that maybe if the 2007 me could travel back in time and see that 2005 show I might like it even more than I did at the time. Maybe I am not getting Tom Meacham fully. Maybe the 2009 me would like this 2007 show more than the 2007 me. I need to spend more time at the next Tom Meacham show, really try to get it, and catch up with myself. If nothing else, this blog is maybe good for me to try to keep track of and figure out what I'm interested in, and why.

Liz Markus, atZieherSmith, through July 27th - they're sort of ominous, apocalyptic, tie-dye-ish, rohrshachs... of hippies. Stain painting, poured painting, folded painting (it must be folded at some point, right?)... I see in these rorschachs lots of 50's/60's painting references together with the 60's/70's cultural references, all of which are included together within this Cold War/Vietnam time-frame. Seeing the same hippie face in every rohrshach is too much though.

Alison Fox, at ATM, through July 6th - lots of nice small abstract paintings, hung salon style throughout the space, with some of the gallery walls covered by sheets of cork (not really cork, a cork wallpaper). It seemed like they were full of nods and references, like little tributes to technique, but maybe that is my imagination. I think the cork thing contributed to that.. the idea of putting up postcards of your favorite paintings.

David Noonan, at Foxy Production, through July 6th - The floor was covered with a big mat, not tatami, but something like tatami... smelled good. The subdued palette, smell, and central "screen" sculpture all made me think of Japan stuff... plus one of the images was vaguely like something from a Mifune samurai movie (even thought it wasn't at all). The images are all black and white screenprinted photographs, or maybe film-stills... there was definitely a cinematic feel.

That screen sculpture mentioned above consists of a group of flat cut-out screenprinted figures - like the Clockwork Orange gang, but they also could be mimes, or clowns, or street performers.